A quote from The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture:
In a predominantly oral culture, one in which communication is based on face-to-face oral speech, there is no means for storing information or knowledge outside of the mind. As a result, once knowledge is obtained, the culture depends upon the community to both retain and repeat that knowledge. With the introduction of writing, people are affordedthe  luxury to learn and think in isolation without the threat of losing those thoughts. As writing becomes the dominant communication system, people no longer need the …

This might be a obvious list of information for some of you, but for others it will be new and helpful for years to come. I don’t know how much time it will save you over the course of your life, but I become quite impatient when I’m helping someone on the computer and they are clicking around the menus to copy and paste things instead of using the shortcuts.
Constantly switching your fingers from the mouse to the keyboard takes time you certainly don’t have. In order to help you …

For years I thought it would be great to just type a few letters and have whole sentences pop up. I never got around to setting that up on my computer, though it’s nearly always been available.
Currently though, I find myself typing a number of the same things, both when I’m home blogging (for example my name, email and URL), and at work (repetitive statements, like teachers had for grade reports back in the day). So I finally decided it was time.
My program of choice is AutoHotKey (thanks Lifehacker). …

You’ve all used and become quite familiar with “bookmarks,” but I’d like to introduce you to some tools that will rock your world: Bookmarklets. They are like Piglet is to pigs, similar in nature, but smarter, talking and half dressed.
The best way to explain bookmarklet’s is to just show you some of my favorites. They function just like bookmarks, but they are more like an arsenal of tools cause they do cool things. If you like one, just drag the link into your toolbar. Here are my current can’t do …

It took quite a bit of time to win my friend Zach over to the joys of Firefox, but he eventually saw the light. But, just like me, Zach doesn’t like a slow computer. When he wants to check something online quickly, he’s still been using IE cause it loads faster on his computer. You might have noticed the same thing, which is why today’s Tech is all about speeding up your computer.
Prefetching Firefox
The reason IE runs quickly is Microsoft set it up so that it’s ‘ready to …

I don’t know for sure, but I think my hard drive is DEAD.

If you haven’t run across this icon in the last few months you probably haven’t been online period (or on my site since it’s sitting right over there on the sidebar). What is this funny orange symbol you ask? and why does it matter?
That my friend, is an icon indicating an RSS “feed” which is basically a neatly packaged format for the content from a website, blog and much more. The best analogy I can think of is like a customizable newspaper on speed. Before newspapers if you wanted …

Sidenote: I might be getting a little overly ambitious, but I think these sorts of weekly topical post might be just the ticket to keep my fingers rolling across these keys and sharing the latest info I can find with you.
Tech Friday’s will mostly be my attempt to update my readers in user friendly language, about the cool new things I’ve come across in my web searching and perusing online.
I won’t be talking about the new gadget to buy, but maybe the latest freeware to download. It might be a …

I think I’d like one of these

At some point it’s going to become pretty normal to have a personal icon, just as most have a standard screen name/username these days. I decided I should come to a decision about what I’ll chose for a standard icon across multiple sites. Here are some current possiblities:

in London

in Mauritania Africa

a quickr pickr post

In November the ipod I had gotten for free just 13 months prior (just past the one year warranty) broke on me.  It was a little bit sad, and it made me a little skeptical of the Apple product, but the ipod sure had grown on me.  My wife used it when she went jogging, I used it to listen to podcast while biking to and from work,  we both used it during long car rides to listen to audiobooks or other music, and I used it to podcast events, …

So after watching The Corporation, I’m sure I’ll have a good handful of post related to it at some point.
This was one thing I saw on a weblink on thecorporation.com to RTmark.
It’s encouraging folks to make video games that are an alternative to the first person shooting game put out by our military.

So, it’s official I’ve got two monitors. I saw a friend with two monitors hooked up once, and I thought it would be cool to tryout.
Anyways, I found a guy giving away a free monitor and I picked it up on my way home from work. And now here I am, dual monitoring it up.
Now I just have to figure out how best to utilize the space. It’s great for web design and people like me who like having a lot of windows open at once (ask …

Okay, so someone showed me this link and I’m thinking this is a huge opportunity. Can you imagine if a lot of people got on board with this and focused on bringing people clean water? A lot of potential.
Stay tuned for more info as I hear about it.